Time Warner Changes Customer's Name To C*** Martinez

It's things like these that make folks dread Comcast and Time Warner Cable's merger.

Time Warner Cable's acquisition by longtime rival Comcast didn't make sense to a lot of people, but judging by they way they treat customers, it's a perfect match.

Roughly a month after Comcast changed the billing name of one of its customers to "A**hole Brown" for quitting their service, Time Warner has pulled a similar stunt.

As per the copy of a letter received by tech blog Ars Technica, Time Warner has been addressing a customer named Esperanza Martinez with a rather vulgar first name. Take a look at it for yourself:

After using the c-word to address her, Time Warner Cable claims it is aware of Martinez tried to cancel her subscription even though she says she never made any such attempts.

In her email to Ars Technica, Martinez wrote: "I am a current Time Warner Cable customer, and I just received a letter today addressed to 'Cunt' Martinez (my last name). It is a letter stating I requested to disconnect my service, which I never did. I have escalated the issue to Time Warner Cable's Corporate customer service, and was told I will receive a 'follow up' call within 48 hours. The only information they could provide was that the name change was made on 2/12/15, which happens to be the same day I used their 'live chat' feature online and called in and spoke to a representative regarding an issue with my cable box. I was not upset even when they could not resolve my issue and had to send a technician out. I have no idea why a TWC employee would do this and risk losing their job. It shows what type of companies TWC and Comcast are by the people they hire to represent them."

While Time Warner didn't address her complaints, it immediately sprung into action when Ars Technica got involved. Soon came an apology and the confession that one of its employees was behind the shameful incident.

“We are truly sorry for the disgraceful treatment of Ms. Martinez and have reached out to her to apologize directly," a company spokesperson said. "Our investigation showed that this was done by an employee at a third-party vendor. We have terminated our agreement with this vendor and are changing our processes to prevent this from happening again.”

To avoid any more embarrassment, Time Warner Cable was forced to negotiate with Martinez just like Comcast had to with its customer. In the end, she got an apology as well as one year of free service. Disgruntled customers revealing their mistreatment by Comcast or Time Warner Cable is nothing new. Both rank among the worst companies as far as customer service goes.

What's even worse is that Comcast has had a $45.2 billion takeover bid accepted for Time Warner. Their merger still needs a regulatory approval, but if it goes through, the U.S. cable market will turn into a giant monopoly.

If customer service in the cable industry is awful now, just imagine how bad it will get when these two become one.